In The Studio With | Mano Le Tough

For his third Mano Le Tough album, Niall Mannion revisited his band-playing days, recording live instruments at his home studio. Danny Turner found out more

© Kostas Maro

As Mano Le Tough, Irish-born Niall Mannion garnered immediate critical acclaim for his debut album Changing Days (2013) –a melodic, genre-hopping blend of modern disco and atmospheric house. Following his second album, Trails, and almost a decade living in Berlin, the guarded yet increasingly sought-after producer/DJ upped sticks to seek solace in the serene, rolling hills of Meilen near Zurich.

Stuck at home over the past 14 months and looking for creative impetus, Mannion returned to his formative years spent playing in post-punk/indie bands. Picking up his instruments once more, his third Mano Le Tough album, At The Moment, is a melancholy yet cautiously optimistic collection of expressive vocal pop, containing slithers of the dance culture he’d been forced to abandon.

When did you move to Zurich and is that a good base for an electronic musician?

“I moved here around five years ago after living in Berlin for eight years before that, so it was a bit of a change. Obviously Zurich isn’t the electronic music mecca that Berlin is, but that suited me at the time. If you travel a lot there’s few better places to travel from, and up until Covid times I was travelling every weekend.”

It sounds like you took the opportunity to make this album while the pandemic was raging. Has the time spent recording at home been useful from that perspective at least?

“Yes it has been because I’d wanted to make a new album but that process was getting interrupted every year by being on the road too much. This time, although it was extremely difficult for many reasons, being at home gave me the chance to work properly on the record and finish it. I’d been gathering material for quite a while. A couple of tracks survived from those original demos, but most were made starting February and March 2020.”

Would it be fair to say that working from home while raising a young family presented some ‘logistical’ challenges?

“Kind of –I do get interrupted quite a lot. I’ll be recording vocals and all of a sudden a child comes crashing in so it’s a little bit difficult to get the takes right [laughs]. If my wife’s out with the kids I can concentrate, otherwise I work when they go to bed. My eldest is four and my youngest is a year and a half, so for them it’s completely normal to have a studio full of gear to bash away on, but only time will tell if they have an interest in all that stuff.”

The dance music references seem a little lighter on At The Moment. Is this the pop album you’ve always wanted to write?

“I just felt a lot freer in terms of not thinking in a club context when it came to arrangements and BPM ranges. In the past, my records have always had one foot in the dance world while also trying to express myself. This time, I didn’t want to put myself under any constraints.”